At 05:56 AM 7/26/96 +0000, John Cole. wrote:>To all of the commenters re: my original post, thanks--but I WOULD like to>clarify one thing. I did not mean to say that recovering the dead and other>rituals were new, as such--merely that they seem to me to have gone to new>extremes in recent times in Western culture; it was the genesis of that>exaggeration which intrigued me. Tarzia may have reflected my own ideas best>about what I see as not QUITE the same old traditions.... I'd add that the>media frenzy is fairly new as a paddle stirring the cauldron. There is some>analogy to the trend in TV news to concentrate on photo ops for crimes,>explosions, etc.instead of issues, I think. Causes of crime, un-photographical>white collar crime, malfeasance of politicos not involving clear sex and money>angles...etc. don't get much coverage, and the public seems to be conditioned>to demand instant gratification--all or nothing. Even whistle-blower exposes>focus on $500 hammers, not the nature of govt/corporate interaction, for>example.>>Why is Al D'Amato a featured player in this plane crash, for example? Or any>other politician, unless they are being exposed for promoting unsafe FAA>policies? Are they not simply vultures looking for free TV time--which TV>networks excitedly offer them? (A small case can be made for a President as>"national chaplain," I suppose, but that strikes me as a fairly minor detail>compared with the saturation news coverage.)>>I submit that there is political obfuscation and grandstanding and>trivialization going on--wholesale promotion of "false consciousness" about>real issues.>>Meanwhile, I'm still amazed but not surprized at the news media's promotion of>"human interest" angles at the expense of other approaches; it plays up and>into the myth of individualism, I think, at the expense of analyses of bigger>or deeper issues.>>Even Olympics news coverage insistently plays up the "human dramas of>individuals" rather than showing the competitions. That a swimmer, say, had a>brother die in a car wreck 5 years ago is explained in detail, but the rules>of the 100M freestyle don't even get a mention! (Pardon the leap, but to me>there is some continuity between my threads (shreds?) of thought....)>>--John R. Cole